Hover Card

A rich, non-modal overlay that opens on pointer-hover (and keyboard focus) of its trigger, used to preview the *contents* of a target — author cards, repo cards, link previews. Distinct from `Tooltip` (short, one-line, no interactive content) and `Popover`…

overlayclient768pxuiv1.1.0

Preview

Hover Card — live renderprimitives-hovercard--variants

Rendered from the story the storybook (a11y) CI gate runs axe against — the preview can't show something that hasn't been verified.

Install

Two equivalent paths — the URL works in any shadcn-CLI setup; the alias works once you've registered @interlace in your components.json.

Via shadcn URL
npx shadcn@latest add https://ds.interlace.tools/r/hover-card.json
With the @interlace alias
npx shadcn@latest add @interlace/hover-card

Behavior

What this component does — the keyboard path, the measured colour, the text equivalent and the states it can be in. Every figure below is read out of the test or the source that enforces it by scripts/build-behavior-map.mjs, so nothing here can outlive the gate that keeps it true.

2 steps, 1 key press — replayed on every PR by the play function of KeyboardFlow. Axe cannot press a key, so this — not the a11y scan — is what proves the component is operable without a mouse.

  1. 1Focus alone reveals the card
  2. 2Escape dismisses it and focus stays on the triggerEscape

Escape is locked, not merely exercised. This primitive is in KEYBOARD_DRIVEN + MUST_ASSERT_ESCAPE — deleting the dismissal assertion from the story fails overlay-nav-keyboard-lock, so the path above cannot quietly stop being tested.

Every semantic colour pair this component's own source uses, measured against the shipped hexes in all 4 theme × scheme combinations. The tightest is card-foreground on card at 14.69:1 (harbor · dark), against a floor of 4.5:1.

Measured WCAG contrast ratios per token pair and theme
PairinterlacelightinterlacedarkharborlightharbordarkFloor
card-foreground on cardcopy in a card19.65:115.71:118.72:114.69:14.5:1SC 1.4.3

Text pairs are held to 4.5:1 (WCAG 2.2 SC 1.4.3); borders, rings and chart axes to 3:1 (SC 1.4.11 non-text). Bold is the worst cell in the row — the one a brand fork has to keep an eye on.

Where it renders, how narrow it survives, and whether its lines are inside the coverage gate — three answers a consumer needs before the paste, not after the bug.

Render boundary
'use client'

Hydrates. It brings JavaScript to any route that imports it — put the boundary here, not at the page.

Minimum viewport
MIN_VIEWPORT = 768

Declared, not assumed. Below 768 CSS px the preflight contract draws a dev-mode outline — how to switch it on.

Coverage gate
not in the gate

The 100% gate currently covers src/charts/**/*.{ts,tsx} and src/lib/**/*.{ts,tsx} and src/primitives/{button-variants,data-state-model,meter-scale,skeleton-variants}.ts and src/primitives/{alert,aspect-ratio,avatar,badge,box,breadcrumb,button,callout,card,checkbox,code-editor,container,data-state,focus-ring,grade-badge,grid,input,label,meter,pagination,published-date,reading-time,section,section-boundary,separator,skip-link,stack,stat-strip,tag,textarea,typography,visually-hidden}.tsx and src/patterns/lint-playground.tsx. This file is outside it — the glob widens in phase 7.2.

History

This component is at v1.1.0, first shipped in @interlace/ui 1.0.0. The version is stamped as a banner into the file the install writes, so the copy in your tree says which one you have — compare it with the number above before deciding whether to re-run the install.

Import

7 named exports — pull the parts you need.

Public API
import { HoverCard, HoverCardCompose, HoverCardPopup, HoverCardPortal, HoverCardPositioner, HoverCardTrigger, MIN_VIEWPORT } from '@/components/ui/hover-card';

Anatomy

Extracted from the primitive's JSDoc header. The source is the only documentation that can't drift.

HoverCard         (PreviewCard.Root, data-slot="hover-card",
                      data-min-viewport=768 on the trigger surface
                      via the Popup — see below)
    ├─ HoverCardTrigger (anchor on the page that opens the card)
    └─ HoverCardPortal
        └─ HoverCardPositioner
            └─ HoverCardPopup (the surface — rounded card + shadow)
Base UI's `Root` is a logical container (no DOM), so we hang
`data-min-viewport` on the `Popup` (the actual rendered surface) and also
forward it on `Root` for inspection-time tooling that walks the parts tree.

API reference

Parsed from the type declarations in the source — the same file the install writes into your tree, so this table can't drift from the component you get.

HoverCardComposeProps

Also accepts every prop of Base UI's <PreviewCard.Positioner> — behaviour we compose rather than reimplement.

PropTypeDescription
trigger*React.ReactNodeTrigger element (the anchor on the page).
popup*React.ReactNodePopup content.
openbooleanForce-open. Useful for screenshot stories.
sideReact.ComponentProps<typeof BasePreviewCard.Positioner>['side']Floating-UI side. Defaults to Base UI's default ("bottom").
classNamestringOptional className on the popup.

Accessibility

Every story for this component is rendered headlessly and checked with axe-core (wcag2aa, wcag22aa, best-practice, ACT) on every PR. That gate has no continue-on-error, so what ships has zero known violations.

What follows is what static analysis can see. Axe cannot press a key and never sees an overlay open, so the operable-without-a-mouse claim lives in Behavior instead, where the keyboard path is replayed step by step.

Focus + keyboard behaviour
Owned by @base-ui/react/preview-card — focus trapping, dismissal and typeahead come from the headless primitive, not from us.
Focus ring (WCAG 2.2 SC 2.4.13)
Not focusable — no focus indicator required.
Reduced motion
No animation to gate.
ARIA in the source
None — semantics come from the element or the Base UI primitive rather than hand-written ARIA.

Examples

3 more states from the same story file.

R-rule compliance

Every primitive in @interlace/ui models to the portable 26-rule floor enforced by the componentApi ESLint preset. The cells below pin exactly where each rule applies in this file.

RuleConceptWhere
R4Extends Base UI part propsEach wrapper extends `React.ComponentProps<typeof BasePreviewCard.X>`
R6data-slot on every parthover-card / -trigger / -portal / -positioner / -popup
R7className merged + ...rest`cn(BASE, className)` + `{...props}` on the Popup
R12Reuse over wrapWraps Base UI; no bespoke open-state machine
R13Ecosystem firstBase UI `PreviewCard` owns positioning, focus, dismissal
R14Declares min viewport`data-min-viewport={String(MIN_VIEWPORT)}` (Root + Popup)
R17API paritySurface name `HoverCard` mirrors Radix / shadcn
R18Tailwind onlyZero inline `style`; Tailwind classes only
R19Tokens only`rounded-md`, `bg-card`, `text-card-foreground`, `p-(--spacing-md)`, `max-w-80`, `shadow-lg`
R20AA contrast`bg-card` / `text-card-foreground` is an AA-cleared token pair
R25Client componentRequired — Base UI's PreviewCard ships client hooks
R26A11y from upstreamBase UI handles aria-describedby + focus + dismissal

Minimum viewport

This primitive declares MIN_VIEWPORT = 768 CSS px (DESIGN_PRINCIPLES #14). When mounted in a container narrower than this, the preflight contract draws a dev-mode outline so the regression is visible during local development.

Opt-in to the dev-mode warning
<body data-interlace-dev>...</body>

Add the data-interlace-dev attribute to the body in development builds only — preflight then outlines any primitive whose container is below its declared data-min-viewport.

Dependencies

Lucide icons
none
NPM dependencies
  • @base-ui/react
Registry dependencies

Source

The full implementation — components/ui/hover-card.tsx once installed.

235 lines · TypeScript
'use client';

import * as React from 'react';

// @interlace/hover-card v1.1.0 — Interlace design system.
// Docs, props and live preview: https://ds.interlace.tools/c/hover-card
// What changed since: https://ds.interlace.tools/c/hover-card#history
// Generated banner — keep it, the upgrade diff reads this version.

/**
 * @interlace/ui — HoverCard
 *
 * A rich, non-modal overlay that opens on pointer-hover (and keyboard focus)
 * of its trigger, used to preview the *contents* of a target — author cards,
 * repo cards, link previews. Distinct from `Tooltip` (short, one-line, no
 * interactive content) and `Popover` (click-driven, can hold a form).
 *
 * Under the hood this wraps Base UI's `PreviewCard` family (Base UI's
 * canonical name for the hover-card pattern). We re-export it under the
 * Radix / shadcn name `HoverCard` so consumers swap drop-in.

…215 more lines…

Registry JSON

The raw registry record — what the shadcn CLI fetches.